Mike Johnson, a Small and Ever-Shrinking Man
- john raymond
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The mark of a man is not what he says when untested, but how his words survive when the truth presses back against them. Mike Johnson has now proven, beyond all doubt, that he is a small man—and one who diminishes further each time he opens his mouth in defense of President Trump.
His collapse on the “FBI informant” lie is the clearest example yet of a politician shrinking into nothingness.
When Johnson first floated the claim that President Trump had acted as an FBI informant in the Epstein case, he thought he had found a clever inversion. Instead of being haunted by Trump’s proximity to Epstein, Johnson believed he could portray Trump as a secret hero—one who cast Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago and secretly aided justice.
But such a tale was never sustainable. It was too crude, too obvious, too transparent. The moment anyone applied reason, the story inverted. To be an informant is to be inside the conspiracy. It is to have knowledge only available to those close enough to the crimes to report on them.
Far from exoneration, the “informant” frame draped Trump in suspicion and splashed corruption onto the FBI itself.
Had Johnson been a man of cunning, he would have seen this as a self-laid trap and never stepped into it. But Johnson is not a strategist; he is not even a clever propagandist. He is a small man, eager to parrot whatever myth he thinks might please his master.
And when the lie collapsed under its own weight, he retreated into the coward’s refuge: I misspoke. But there was no misspeaking. There was only lying—and the shrinking when the lie could not hold.
This is Johnson’s pattern. He puffs himself up in the moment, imagining himself bold enough to rewrite the narrative, only to wither when reality presses back. The result is not the image of a leader, but of a small man being steadily eroded in public view.
Each time he collapses, he is diminished. Each time he hides behind evasions, he is reduced further. He is not merely weak—he is visibly shrinking, a figure wasting away under the weight of his own cowardice.
For the regime, this matters. Autocrats need loyalists who can hold the line, men who can repeat a lie without hesitation, men who can stare down the truth and not flinch.
Johnson cannot do this. He is too obvious, too clumsy, too small. His loyalty may be unyielding, but it is also useless. Instead of strengthening Trump, Johnson weakens him by collapsing narratives that were meant to shield.
Instead of protecting the regime, Johnson inadvertently confirms its corruption.
Johnson’s smallness is not simply personal; it is structural. He is the Speaker of the House, but his title is hollow. He does not command events; events command him. He does not lead his caucus; he stumbles after it. He does not hold the line; he drifts with the current, hoping not to be noticed until the next crisis demands his voice.
And when that moment comes, he proves again that his voice is brittle, his presence paper-thin, his stature shrinking still further.
In the end, Johnson is not a man who grows into his role; he is a man who shrinks with each passing day. His words betray him, his evasions diminish him, and his cowardice defines him.
The office of Speaker cannot make Johnson larger. It only makes his smallness more visible.
Mike Johnson is not simply a small man. He is an ever-shrinking one.